The linked source is the free EB article, which looks nothing like ours. The full Britanica article, which you have to pay to view, looks somewhat similar, but I'm not sure whether it's a copyvio or not. I've copied-and-pasted EB's pay article onto my own private web site temporarily here. It's not word-for-word similar, but it is paragraph-for-paragraph similar. Is this a copyvio? More opinions needed please. – Quadell(talk) (bounties) 17:03, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure which article I was looking at (I think I have access to the pay article through my school connection), but looking at the first version of our article, certain phrasings are too similar not to have been copied. "brief news reports, a daily story, and a column for women", for example, can no way be a coincidence. The initial version had already seen a fair amount of rephrasing, and there's been more since, but it looks to me like any given version is still a derivative of a copyrighted work, and thus a no-no. --RobthTalk 18:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
If someone looks at the Britannica article while they are writing the Wikipedia article and follows the same general outline but rewrites everything with the exception of a few phrases that are going to be rehashed anyway, I don't see that it is a copyright infringement. —Centrx→talk • 01:25, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I have to say, there are just too many similarities for them to have been just looking at the Brittanica article; on the contrary, it reads like they were going through rephrasing and abbreviating large sections; picking phrases at random, I keep finding clear rephrasings; "embarked on freelance journalism" becomes "embarked on a career of free-lance journalist"; "purchasing the nearly bankrupt London Evening News and transforming it into a popular newspaper with brief news reports, a daily story, and a column for women" becomes "purchased the nearly bankrupt London Evening News and turning it into a popular paper with brief news reports, a daily story, and a column for women"; "By this time Northcliffe's press empire appeared to hold such power over public opinion that he tried unsuccessfully to influence the composition of Prime Minister David Lloyd George's cabinet" becomes "By the end of the war he had such a grip on public opinion, that he even tried, unsuccessfully, to influence the composition of David Lloyd George's cabinet."; its clear that the original author took pains to alter substantial portions of this, but a number of sentences and the overall structure are very clearly taken from a copyrighted work. --RobthTalk 02:49, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
